Speakers
NextGen School Safety
Ken Williams
Authority on School Culture & Safety, Author of Starting a Movement
As founder of Unfold the Soul, Kenneth C. Williams, M.Ed. is living proof that educators can and should “live their posters.” A leading authority in the areas of school culture, collaboration, leadership, school safety and peak performance, he is skilled in joining the “why” of educational practice to the “how.” Known for his provocative and engaging combination of “heart, humor and hammer,” Ken is an expert at helping schools make the collective commitment to changes in school culture that are required to ensure high levels of learning for all students. He believes that “what’s best for kids is first and what’s best for adults is a close second.” Ken has served as a distinguished teacher, school leader, speaker and consultant. He is the author of two books: Creating Physical and Emotional Security in Schools and his latest bestseller with Tom Hierck, Starting a Movement: Building Culture from the Inside-Out.
Vaugn Baker
Intruder Response & Behavior Pattern Recognition Expert, President Strategos Intl.
Vaughn Baker is President of Strategos International, a Kansas City firm that has provided security training to more than 130,000 professionals in 15 countries. Strategos originally focused on training professional first responders, such as law enforcement, in a wide variety of tactical-related topics. In 2007 Vaughn and his associates at Strategos saw the need to begin providing training to the “True First Responder” – those who are on-scene when the crisis begins. He has personally trained thousands of school, healthcare, government, law enforcement and military personnel in security practices. Vaughn has developed specialized intruder response curriculum (including some of the nation’s leading training on behavior pattern recognition) for schools and churches. He spent a number of years in law enforcement including patrol, investigation, SWAT and special operations duties. He also served as deputy director of training for the Surefire Institute, a California-based tactical training company. Vaughn is the author of The Church Security Handbook and co-author of Active Threat.
Rick Shaw
Prevention Safety Expert, CEO & CDO of Awareity Inc.
Rick Shaw is the Founder, CEO and CDO of Awareity Inc. – a developer of innovative, web-based and award-winning prevention platform for students, employees and communities. He has more than 20 years of experience performing numerous types of assessments (threat, compliance, physical, information security, social media and others), with a focus on prevention processes across multiple industries and types of threats. Rick’s experiences – combined with extensive research using post-event reports, lawsuits and surveys – has helped expose the most dangerous disconnects and potential liabilities facing schools (including new threats related to social media).
In addition to working with organizational leaders, Rick has been called upon to speak at numerous conferences in the United States, Canada, South Korea and Japan for his expertise in safety (student, employee, third-party, community, etc.) and prevention. He utilizes evidence-based data from hundreds of post-event reports and extensive research to expose each point where proper preventive tactics were possible in most incidents and tragedies.
Rick’s passion is student and child safety, and he leads an extensive research effort at Awareity to help educational leaders understand the need for comprehensive and proven prevention solutions to improve student safety and to prevent escalating consequences related to sexual abuse, bullying, cyberbullying, campus violence, suicide, human trafficking, homegrown terrorism and alcohol/drug abuse.
Heather Forbes
Founder of Beyond Consequences Institute, Author of Help for Billy
Bio Coming Soon!
Mike Paget
International Speaker, Consultant, Author of Defying the Defiance
Mike Paget currently works as a consultant to schools throughout North America to help them better teach challenging students. As a state consultant for students with severe emotional and behavioral problems, he worked with ODD, CD and other special needs students for more than 25 years. Mike is an innovator of effective approaches for working with extremely challenging students and has conducted seminars across the U.S. and Canada on creative techniques for managing classroom behavior, student aggression and crisis intervention. He is co-author of Aggressive and Violent Students and Defying the Defiance. His newest book is High on the Spectrum: Asperger’s, High-Functioning Autism & Related Personalities.